


Do overs are cliché

by DoomNightAt12



Series: T&B Notfic collection [4]
Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Back in your younger body with your old memeories, Gen, Notfic, Tiger says "Screw the trope rules I have to save EVERYBODY", Time Travel Fix-It, Wish Fulfillment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 15:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30023748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoomNightAt12/pseuds/DoomNightAt12
Summary: “Do overs are cliché, and in the movies something always goes wrong, but if you really had the chance, you’d do it, right?”Wish fulfilment AU where Kotetsu is hit with the cliché ‘Back in my younger body with all my memories’, and despite being genre savvy, goes for it with all he has for the sake of his partner and all those in his life.
Relationships: Barnaby "Bunny" Brooks Jr. & Kaburagi T. Kotetsu
Series: T&B Notfic collection [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688401
Kudos: 10





	Do overs are cliché

Kotetsu wakes to find himself back in his childhood home, in his old bedroom, in his younger self's body.

Confused, he leaps from the bed and heads to the kitchen, spying the calendar. It's years in the past, but it's also ever so close to that fateful Christmas Eve that Would change his partners life forever. Having watched plenty of TV he can hazard a guess at what trope he was living, and the consequences it could spawn, but he still had a Heroes heart.

He knows he has to try. 

He immediately legs it to the train station in the snow, only briefly saying goodbye to his brother in a ‘I have to do this’ way. Muramasa watches on in utter shock.

He makes the trip to the city on his own, legging it to the Brooks home, using those five minutes of his NEXT power each hour to get his there sooner. When Samantha sees the exhausted and frozen boy on the doorstep, she brings him inside, tending to him as he pants out how he need to speak to the home owners.

As she brings him close to the fire, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, she asks him to take a moment to catch his breath. There's a creak at the door, and a tiny and curious Barnaby Jr can be spotted peaking in, and it takes everything for Kotetsu not to shout 'Bunny!' at the adorable child version of his partner. Samantha encourages the boy to come in, offering to make them both warm drinks. While she steps out, Kotetsu starts chatting to the boy, making his eyes light up in wonder when he says he came from outside of Sternbild.

When the Brooks return, they're surprised by their visitor, but agree to hear him out considering the distance he'd come. Suddenly realising how crazy time-travel is actually, Kotetsu does his best to lie, saying he's a NEXT with the ability to see into the future. He says that he'd had a dream the other night that something bad was going to happen to the family. He says he ‘remembered’ reading about the Brook’s work, and that was how he knew who they were.

When they question the legitimacy of his predictions, he tries to quickly think of how to make the lie more believable.

He says that they’re usually only small things he predicts, like tripping and spilling his cereal on his brother, or being chased by a dog on the way to school, but what happened in the vision made him want to try change it. They ask for details, but he gives a side glance to the younger boy. Getting the hint, they ‘remind’ Samantha that she and Barnaby were going out in a bit to see the Christmas display, and they should get ready. Now with them out of the room, Tiger retails the vision Bunny always remembered: A man with a gun, standing over the corpses while the Christmas tree burned. They ask for the details of the man, and he says glasses and a mole. They immediately guess Maverick, and Emily is mostly shocked the man is armed, while Kotetsu is shocked in general.

“Wait, you don’t trust him?” 

The Brooks look between each other, “As a good of a friend he’s been, we couldn’t overlook the illegal use of our company’s weapons production for his pet TV show. We were going to confront him tonight about it, but if he’s going to be armed…”

As an extra push, Tiger explains his visions are seen from other people’s perspective, and that the murder would be seen by their son.

The Brooks say they believe him, and Tiger is honestly very surprised.

“Wait, you’ll believe me, just like that?”

“Considering the NEXT HeroTV has shown us, it’s not hard to believe one could see a day into the future.”

As an extra, they even decided to all go out to see the Christmas display, and postpone their chat with Maverick. They take Kotetsu back to the train station, thanking him and saying they won't forget his help. He lingers in Sternbild to make sure nothing happens that night, which it doesn’t, and once he was back home, he later sees on TV that Maverick was arrested for conspiracy with a terrorist group, and HeroTV was shut down.

Kotetsu is happy that the Brooks will continue to live with their son, but a little sad his dream career will no longer exist.

Time continues, and he realises he’s got to live out his life once more, so why not do what he can to save as many lives as possible?

High school plays out much the same with Antonio and Tomoe, however he is very pushy about Tomoe checking her health, even doing all he can to earn money for visits to larger hospitals. NEXT’s don’t have the greatest likeness without HeroTV, however a new smaller program airs about NEXT helping around Sternbild and even afar, all sponsored by the Brooks company.

Kotetsu doesn’t have good enough grades or coordination to join the police, and mostly ends up job hopping, while still trying to re-build old contacts like Ben and Nathan. Kaede still comes into the world, but this time Tomoe stays with them. The Kubaragi’s both apply for positions at the relatively new school for NEXT and are given an apartment so they can move to Sternbild. Kotetsu gets to re-meet Ivan and Paolin, as numerous overseas NEXT are also applying to the school, and some of the out of school hours support they provide lets him meet Katrina, as well as a few adult NEXT.

(Guess what, also partly caught in the Maverick scandal, Mr. Legend receives intervention and in the long term the Petrovs don’t fall apart. Yuri still becomes lawyer, but one who helps NEXT and advocates for their training and counseling rather than imprisonment.)

It's not the Hero life, but it's pretty damn close for Kotetsu.

Then one day, Barnaby ends up visiting the school, because the major Brooks sponsors and he actually thought up the school idea because he knows it’s totally fun growing up with powers that give you sensory overloads.

And Kotetsu has the greatest emotional conflict ever, because he looks at Barnaby and can see how genuinely happy he is, but it wrenches his heart to know there's no reason for the two of them to team up and fight together and oh _how_ he'd been missing that. How he'd been missing Barnaby.

When they finally get to talk, Barnaby tells him the story of how a kid had came to their house and told his parents that someone as going to shoot them, so they ended up going out for the day and getting the man arrested later on.

"And that kid was called Kotetsu Kubaragi, but he said he had precog NEXT powers, not physical, so what’s the truth?"

And Tiger just laughs. And Laughs. And hugs him, and says:

“I’ve missed you Bunny”


End file.
